A hand kids past a misplaced believer.
A comet that has delighted backyard astronomers in recent weeks after an unexpected eruption has now grown larger than the sun.
The sun remains by far the most massive object in the solar system, with an extended influence of particles that reaches all the planets. But the comparatively tiny Comet Holmes has released so much gas and dust that its extended atmosphere, or coma, is larger than the diameter of the sun. The comparison is clear in a new image.
"It continues to expand and is now the largest single object in the solar system," according to astronomers at the University of Hawaii.
The coma's diameter on Nov. 9 was 869,900 miles (1.4 million kilometers), based on measurements by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. They used observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The sun's diameter, stated differently by various sources and usually rounded to the nearest 100, is about 864,900 miles (1.392 million kilometers).
Separately, a new Hubble Space Telescope photo of the comet reveals an intriguing bow-tie structure around its nucleus.
The comet's coma—mostly microscopic particles—shines by reflecting sunlight.
See for yourself
Holmes is still visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy star anytime after dark, high in the northeast sky. You can find it by using this sky map. It is faintly visible from cities, and from dark country locations is truly remarkable.
"Right now, in a dark sky it appears as a very noticeable circular cloud," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's Skywatching Columnist. Rao advises looking for the comet this weekend, before the moon becomes more of a factor. The comet will likely diminish in brightness yet remain visible for the next two to three weeks, he said.
"Over the next few weeks and months, the coma and tail are expected to expand even more while the comet will fade as the dust disperses," Stevenson and her colleagues write.
On Monday, Nov. 19, the comet will create a unique skywatching event with its see-through coma, according to the Web site Spaceweather.com: "The comet will glide by the star Mirfak [also called Alpha Persei] and appear to swallow it—a sight not to be missed."
A small telescope will reveal the fuzzy coma. Lacking a long tail characteristic of some great comets, however, Holmes is not the most dramatic object in the sky for casual observers.
Mystery outburst
Nobody knows why Holmes erupted, but it underwent a similar explosive brightening in 1892. The recent display, which began Oct. 24, brought the comet from visual obscurity to being one of the brighter objects in the night sky. It has since dimmed somewhat as the material races outward from the nucleus at roughly 1,100 mph (0.5 km/sec).
The Hawaiian astronomy team writes in a press statement: "This amazing eruption of the comet is produced by dust ejected from a tiny solid nucleus made of ice and rock, only 3.6 kilometers (roughly 2.2 miles) in diameter."
The new image from the Hawaiian observatory also shows a modest tail forming to one side, now just a fuzzy region to the lower-right. That's caused by the pressure of sunlight pushing on the gas and dust of the coma.
But the comet is so far away—149 million miles (240 million kilometers), or about 1.6 times the distance from Earth to the sun—that even Hubble can't resolve its nucleus.
The offset nature of the coma, seen in ground-based images, suggests "a large fragment broke off and subsequently disintegrated into tiny dust particles after moving away from the main nucleus," Hubble astronomers said in a statement today. The comet's distance, plus all the dust, prevent Hubble from seeing any fragments, however.
Friday, November 16, 2007
BARRY BONDS DONE 11-16-07
Barry Bonds is effectively suspended. And Bud Selig didn't have to do a thing.
Rosenthal on Bonds' indictmentFOXSports.com's senior baseball writer Ken Rosenthal weighs in on Barry Bonds' indictment. Hear what may be in store for MLB's home run king.No team will sign Bonds as a free agent now that he has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice by the federal government.
If any club was even considering Bonds it will quickly abandon the idea, knowing his availability would be in question, his presence a crippling distraction and marketing nightmare.
It's over, folks — Bonds' playing career, and maybe any chance for him to reclaim his name.
Bonds, 43, could play again if he is found not guilty, but by then who knows what kind of condition he might be in? And who knows if any team would still want him?
For baseball, the only negative is that the indictment didn't come last off-season, before Bonds broke Hank Aaron's all-time home-run record. Bonds was also a free agent then, and the Giants re-signed him for one more season — a business decision they surely would not have made under the present circumstances.
Finally, Bonds is in a corner.
If he is found guilty, he can forget about the Hall of Fame, which instructs voters to consider character, integrity and sportsmanship, subjective standards that surely would be influenced by jail time.
Even if Bonds is found not guilty, his image is almost certain to take another severe hit. More incriminating evidence against him will surface if the case goes to trial — and rest assured, neither side is in the mood for a plea bargain.
For years Bonds' supporters defended him — with some justification — by saying that he committed no crime and never tested positive for steroids.
Both premises are about to be challenged. The indictment alleges that Bonds tested positive for steroids in November of 2000, three years before Major League Baseball began its testing program. The test might have come from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). Bonds was a BALCO client.
To convict Bonds, the government must demonstrate that he lied to a grand jury investigating BALCO when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. The author of Game of Shadows made that argument rather convincingly, though not in a court of law.
Which isn't to say that Bonds will be found guilty.
Perjury is difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and Bonds' lawyers will fight the government at every turn. The only way Bonds can become a sympathetic figure is if it appears he is being persecuted. Bonds' lead attorney, Michael Rains, already is playing that angle.
Judging from Rains' past comments and post-indictment news conference, his strategy could turn into as much of an attack on the prosecutors' conduct as their case. Rains kicked off the battle for public opinion Thursday night by criticizing prosecutors for releasing the indictment to the media before informing Bonds and his defense team.
"Now that their biased allegations must finally be presented openly in a court of law, they won't be able to hide their unethical misconduct from the public any longer," Rains said in a prepared statement. "You won't read about those facts in this indictment, but now the public will get the whole truth, not just selectively leaked fabrications from anonymous sources."
Perhaps, but the stakes are high for the government in any high-profile case. After taking nearly four years to prepare an indictment, the prosecutors would look incredibly foolish if they stumbled at trial. They might not get a conviction, but it's doubtful they will present a slipshod case.
One way or another, Bonds is fighting a losing battle. Even if he escapes relatively unscathed from a legal perspective, his standing with the public is so low that the majority of fans are unlikely to forgive him. Not that he seems to care.
No, he won't recover like Martha Stewart, who agreed to a five-month prison term when confronted with similar charges. Stewart went to jail and 2½ years later, she is again a popular homemaking expert, having revived her business empire seemingly overnight.
Bonds, thanks to his surly personality, has built no such empire, even though he was the Michael Jordan of his sport. Fans wonder if a conviction would result in Selig placing an asterisk next to his records, but there would be no need. Bonds is a walking asterisk, a constant reminder of an unseemly era.
Rosenthal on Bonds' indictmentFOXSports.com's senior baseball writer Ken Rosenthal weighs in on Barry Bonds' indictment. Hear what may be in store for MLB's home run king.No team will sign Bonds as a free agent now that he has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice by the federal government.
If any club was even considering Bonds it will quickly abandon the idea, knowing his availability would be in question, his presence a crippling distraction and marketing nightmare.
It's over, folks — Bonds' playing career, and maybe any chance for him to reclaim his name.
Bonds, 43, could play again if he is found not guilty, but by then who knows what kind of condition he might be in? And who knows if any team would still want him?
For baseball, the only negative is that the indictment didn't come last off-season, before Bonds broke Hank Aaron's all-time home-run record. Bonds was also a free agent then, and the Giants re-signed him for one more season — a business decision they surely would not have made under the present circumstances.
Finally, Bonds is in a corner.
If he is found guilty, he can forget about the Hall of Fame, which instructs voters to consider character, integrity and sportsmanship, subjective standards that surely would be influenced by jail time.
Even if Bonds is found not guilty, his image is almost certain to take another severe hit. More incriminating evidence against him will surface if the case goes to trial — and rest assured, neither side is in the mood for a plea bargain.
For years Bonds' supporters defended him — with some justification — by saying that he committed no crime and never tested positive for steroids.
Both premises are about to be challenged. The indictment alleges that Bonds tested positive for steroids in November of 2000, three years before Major League Baseball began its testing program. The test might have come from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). Bonds was a BALCO client.
To convict Bonds, the government must demonstrate that he lied to a grand jury investigating BALCO when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. The author of Game of Shadows made that argument rather convincingly, though not in a court of law.
Which isn't to say that Bonds will be found guilty.
Perjury is difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and Bonds' lawyers will fight the government at every turn. The only way Bonds can become a sympathetic figure is if it appears he is being persecuted. Bonds' lead attorney, Michael Rains, already is playing that angle.
Judging from Rains' past comments and post-indictment news conference, his strategy could turn into as much of an attack on the prosecutors' conduct as their case. Rains kicked off the battle for public opinion Thursday night by criticizing prosecutors for releasing the indictment to the media before informing Bonds and his defense team.
"Now that their biased allegations must finally be presented openly in a court of law, they won't be able to hide their unethical misconduct from the public any longer," Rains said in a prepared statement. "You won't read about those facts in this indictment, but now the public will get the whole truth, not just selectively leaked fabrications from anonymous sources."
Perhaps, but the stakes are high for the government in any high-profile case. After taking nearly four years to prepare an indictment, the prosecutors would look incredibly foolish if they stumbled at trial. They might not get a conviction, but it's doubtful they will present a slipshod case.
One way or another, Bonds is fighting a losing battle. Even if he escapes relatively unscathed from a legal perspective, his standing with the public is so low that the majority of fans are unlikely to forgive him. Not that he seems to care.
No, he won't recover like Martha Stewart, who agreed to a five-month prison term when confronted with similar charges. Stewart went to jail and 2½ years later, she is again a popular homemaking expert, having revived her business empire seemingly overnight.
Bonds, thanks to his surly personality, has built no such empire, even though he was the Michael Jordan of his sport. Fans wonder if a conviction would result in Selig placing an asterisk next to his records, but there would be no need. Bonds is a walking asterisk, a constant reminder of an unseemly era.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
BAD TEETH 10-31-07
Halloween recall: Beware of fake teeth
Chinese-made ‘Ugly Teeth,’ sold by the tens of thousands, contain lead
Recall information
Are your kids' toys safe?
To find out if a product you own has been recalled, you can try searching the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database.
Concerned parents and caregivers also can sign up to received an e-mail alert when a new product recall is made public.
To find out if a toy you own was part of the Mattel recall, and get information about obtaining a voucher for the cost of the product.
WASHINGTON - The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced an 11th-hour recall Wednesday to warn consumers that fake Halloween teeth sold by the tens of thousands since last year contain excessive amounts of lead.
The $2 packages of "Ugly Teeth" are only the latest in a long line of Chinese-made toys and novelty items recalled because of lead. The CPSC announced the recall on Halloween, in a late-morning news release.
Since January 2006, the CPSC estimates retailers nationwide have sold about 43,000 eight-piece packages of the party favors. There were no immediate reports of injuries or illness.
Chinese-made ‘Ugly Teeth,’ sold by the tens of thousands, contain lead
Recall information
Are your kids' toys safe?
To find out if a product you own has been recalled, you can try searching the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database.
Concerned parents and caregivers also can sign up to received an e-mail alert when a new product recall is made public.
To find out if a toy you own was part of the Mattel recall, and get information about obtaining a voucher for the cost of the product.
WASHINGTON - The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced an 11th-hour recall Wednesday to warn consumers that fake Halloween teeth sold by the tens of thousands since last year contain excessive amounts of lead.
The $2 packages of "Ugly Teeth" are only the latest in a long line of Chinese-made toys and novelty items recalled because of lead. The CPSC announced the recall on Halloween, in a late-morning news release.
Since January 2006, the CPSC estimates retailers nationwide have sold about 43,000 eight-piece packages of the party favors. There were no immediate reports of injuries or illness.
PIRATES 10-31-07
NAIROBI, Kenya - U.S. sailors boarded a North Korean-flagged vessel to help crew members wounded in a battle with pirates off the coast of Somalia, the Navy said Wednesday. American ships were also tracking a hijacked Japanese tanker in Somali waters after sinking two pirate skiffs tied to it.
With permission from the North Koreans, the Navy boarded the ship with a small team of medics, security personnel and an interpreter, the military said. The Koreans already had regained control of the vessel and detained all pirates.
The Navy medics treated three pirates and three Korean sailors for gunshot wounds. Another pirate was dead. The Korean sailors were taken aboard the American destroyer and treated there for two hours before returning to their ship. The pirates remain detained on the Korean vessel.
A helicopter had flown from the destroyer USS James E. Williams on Tuesday to investigate a phoned-in tip of a hijacked ship and demanded by radio that the pirates give up their weapons, the military said in a statement. The crew of the Dai Hong Dan then overwhelmed the hijackers.
The ship had departed from Mogadishu, where it made a delivery of sugar, said Cyrus Mody, a senior analyst at the International Maritime Bureau in London.
The incident came as the U.S. and North Korea worked toward the disabling of the communist country's main nuclear complex by the end of the year, which would be the biggest step Pyongyang has taken yet toward dismantling its atomic weapons program.
A Navy spokeswoman, Lt. Jessica Gandy, said the American destroyer had not been shadowing the North Korean ship. She said it was not known what its cargo was.
Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said it was logical that the military would want to know "what is being transported on the high seas and who is out there operating and if they have nothing but the best intentions in mind."
On Sunday, coalition ships fired on and sank two pirate skiffs tied to the Japanese chemical tanker, the Golden Nori, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, the 5th Fleet spokesman. A Navy photo showed one of the skiffs burning after being hit by a gun aboard the USS Porter, a guided-missile destroyer. The Navy said U.S. ships were monitoring the tanker.
A Durval Shipping official in Tokyo said the tanker's 28 crew — two South Koreans, nine Filipinos including the ship's captain and 12 Myanmar citizens — had not been injured.
The captain called his family and told them that "the crew is safe, that they are being treated well, that they are in good physical condition," said Philippines Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos.
The tanker was carrying four kinds of chemicals, including, highly flammable benzene, said the Durval official, who gave only his last name, Oka. He refused to say how much benzene the ship was carrying.
"We were aware of what was on the ship when we fired," Robertson said.
Conejos said the hijackers made no immediate demands. The Philippine government is closely coordinating efforts to win the release of the crew with the ship's owner, the Japanese government, international shipping authorities, he said.
"Because of a lack of central control, we have no (Somali) government to talk to ask for information. We have to get it ourselves," Conejos said.
The ship had loaded at several ports in Asia and was bound for Europe, with no plans to stop in Africa, said Mody, the International Maritime Bureau official.
"We were later informed by the coalition forces that the vessel was taken into Somali territorial waters," he said.
The IMB reported this month that pirate attacks worldwide jumped 14 percent in the first nine months of 2007, with the biggest increases in the poorly policed waters of Somalia and Nigeria. Reported attacks in Somali waters rose to 26, up from eight a year earlier, the bureau.
This is the third time Somali gunmen have been overpowered by mariners.
In 1989, crew members of the MV Alpha Mitchel managed to overpower their captors in Somalia waters. In 2004, six crew members of the MT Jenlil also managed to escape to Yemen after overpowering their captors in Somalia territorial waters.
With permission from the North Koreans, the Navy boarded the ship with a small team of medics, security personnel and an interpreter, the military said. The Koreans already had regained control of the vessel and detained all pirates.
The Navy medics treated three pirates and three Korean sailors for gunshot wounds. Another pirate was dead. The Korean sailors were taken aboard the American destroyer and treated there for two hours before returning to their ship. The pirates remain detained on the Korean vessel.
A helicopter had flown from the destroyer USS James E. Williams on Tuesday to investigate a phoned-in tip of a hijacked ship and demanded by radio that the pirates give up their weapons, the military said in a statement. The crew of the Dai Hong Dan then overwhelmed the hijackers.
The ship had departed from Mogadishu, where it made a delivery of sugar, said Cyrus Mody, a senior analyst at the International Maritime Bureau in London.
The incident came as the U.S. and North Korea worked toward the disabling of the communist country's main nuclear complex by the end of the year, which would be the biggest step Pyongyang has taken yet toward dismantling its atomic weapons program.
A Navy spokeswoman, Lt. Jessica Gandy, said the American destroyer had not been shadowing the North Korean ship. She said it was not known what its cargo was.
Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said it was logical that the military would want to know "what is being transported on the high seas and who is out there operating and if they have nothing but the best intentions in mind."
On Sunday, coalition ships fired on and sank two pirate skiffs tied to the Japanese chemical tanker, the Golden Nori, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, the 5th Fleet spokesman. A Navy photo showed one of the skiffs burning after being hit by a gun aboard the USS Porter, a guided-missile destroyer. The Navy said U.S. ships were monitoring the tanker.
A Durval Shipping official in Tokyo said the tanker's 28 crew — two South Koreans, nine Filipinos including the ship's captain and 12 Myanmar citizens — had not been injured.
The captain called his family and told them that "the crew is safe, that they are being treated well, that they are in good physical condition," said Philippines Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos.
The tanker was carrying four kinds of chemicals, including, highly flammable benzene, said the Durval official, who gave only his last name, Oka. He refused to say how much benzene the ship was carrying.
"We were aware of what was on the ship when we fired," Robertson said.
Conejos said the hijackers made no immediate demands. The Philippine government is closely coordinating efforts to win the release of the crew with the ship's owner, the Japanese government, international shipping authorities, he said.
"Because of a lack of central control, we have no (Somali) government to talk to ask for information. We have to get it ourselves," Conejos said.
The ship had loaded at several ports in Asia and was bound for Europe, with no plans to stop in Africa, said Mody, the International Maritime Bureau official.
"We were later informed by the coalition forces that the vessel was taken into Somali territorial waters," he said.
The IMB reported this month that pirate attacks worldwide jumped 14 percent in the first nine months of 2007, with the biggest increases in the poorly policed waters of Somalia and Nigeria. Reported attacks in Somali waters rose to 26, up from eight a year earlier, the bureau.
This is the third time Somali gunmen have been overpowered by mariners.
In 1989, crew members of the MV Alpha Mitchel managed to overpower their captors in Somalia waters. In 2004, six crew members of the MT Jenlil also managed to escape to Yemen after overpowering their captors in Somalia territorial waters.
BOY STARTS FIRE 10-31-07
LOS ANGELES - Officials blamed a wildfire that consumed more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes last week on a boy playing with matches, and said they would ask a prosecutor to consider the case.
The boy admitted to sparking the fire on Oct. 21, Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Diane Hecht said Tuesday. Ferocious winds helped it quickly spread.
"He admitted to playing with matches and accidentally starting the fire," Hecht said in a statement.
Police did not release the boy's name. Los Angeles County fire Capt. Michael Brown only would say Wednesday that he was younger than 13.
The boy was released to his parents, and the case will be presented to the district attorney's office, Hecht said. It was not clear if he had been arrested or cited by detectives.
Arson investigators first talked to the boy's parents on Oct. 22 after determining the blaze began the day before in the back yard of their Agua Dulce home, Brown said.
The home was not damaged in the fire, Brown said.
Investigators initially considered a downed power line as the source of the fire, but never officially listed it as the cause.
The blaze, which spread quickly through the neighborhood, was among 15 or so major wildfires that destroyed some 2,100 homes and blackened 809 square miles from Los Angeles to the Mexican border last week. Seven deaths were blamed directly on the fires, six evacuees died of natural causes and one person died of a fall.
Authorities arrested five people for arson during that period, but none have been linked to any of the major blazes.
All but four of the blazes are now fully contained. Firefighters on Wednesday continued to cut lines around the remaining fires and kept a close eye on the weather.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Deputy Maribel Rizo said prosecutors were yet to determine if the boy's parents would be held accountable for any financial losses caused by the fire. Rizo did not know when prosecutors would be given the case.
Forecasters have said moderate Santa Ana winds could pick up later in the week.
Investigators have blamed an arsonist for setting a destructive wildfire in Orange County that blackened 28,500 acres and destroyed 16 homes.
Authorities were seeking the driver of a white Ford F-150 pickup truck spotted in a canyon area around the time the fire broke out. They said they wanted to talk to the driver, but stopped short of calling the person a suspect.
Officials offered a $285,000 reward to anyone with information that will lead to an arrest and conviction.
The boy admitted to sparking the fire on Oct. 21, Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Diane Hecht said Tuesday. Ferocious winds helped it quickly spread.
"He admitted to playing with matches and accidentally starting the fire," Hecht said in a statement.
Police did not release the boy's name. Los Angeles County fire Capt. Michael Brown only would say Wednesday that he was younger than 13.
The boy was released to his parents, and the case will be presented to the district attorney's office, Hecht said. It was not clear if he had been arrested or cited by detectives.
Arson investigators first talked to the boy's parents on Oct. 22 after determining the blaze began the day before in the back yard of their Agua Dulce home, Brown said.
The home was not damaged in the fire, Brown said.
Investigators initially considered a downed power line as the source of the fire, but never officially listed it as the cause.
The blaze, which spread quickly through the neighborhood, was among 15 or so major wildfires that destroyed some 2,100 homes and blackened 809 square miles from Los Angeles to the Mexican border last week. Seven deaths were blamed directly on the fires, six evacuees died of natural causes and one person died of a fall.
Authorities arrested five people for arson during that period, but none have been linked to any of the major blazes.
All but four of the blazes are now fully contained. Firefighters on Wednesday continued to cut lines around the remaining fires and kept a close eye on the weather.
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Deputy Maribel Rizo said prosecutors were yet to determine if the boy's parents would be held accountable for any financial losses caused by the fire. Rizo did not know when prosecutors would be given the case.
Forecasters have said moderate Santa Ana winds could pick up later in the week.
Investigators have blamed an arsonist for setting a destructive wildfire in Orange County that blackened 28,500 acres and destroyed 16 homes.
Authorities were seeking the driver of a white Ford F-150 pickup truck spotted in a canyon area around the time the fire broke out. They said they wanted to talk to the driver, but stopped short of calling the person a suspect.
Officials offered a $285,000 reward to anyone with information that will lead to an arrest and conviction.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN 10-31-07
Hey just wanted to say Happy Halloween to everone. So, Happy Halloween. Anyways, I hope everyone gets a chance to get out go trick or treating. No one is too old to do so. Its fun to dress up as someone or something other than yourself for a day. And best of all you get candy, lots and lots of candy. Just what this country needs is a day to make us all fatter. They better be passing out fat free candy or something other than candy, like stickers or better yet how about some money.
Ok, I am done rambling. Everybody have a safe and happy halloween and make sure none of your candy comes from China.
Ok, I am done rambling. Everybody have a safe and happy halloween and make sure none of your candy comes from China.
PORN WORTH WATCHING 10-31-07
Porn stocks worth, um, watching
In an industry that counts on impulse buys, video on demand and faster cell-phone Internet access should be a boon for publicly traded adult-entertainment companies.
Technology has made pornography easier to produce and to distribute. By some estimates, pornography accounts for 40% of all Internet traffic and pay-TV sales. But, for shareholders at least, technology has yet to make pornography wildly profitable.
Playboy Enterprises (PLA, news, msgs) has seen its share price fall by 30% since the start of 2004, compared with a 39% gain in the S&P 500 Index ($INX). New Frontier Media (NOOF, news, msgs), a Boulder, Colo., business that distributes pornographic videos, trades lower than it did three years ago. And a smaller video distributor in Europe called Private Media (PRVT, news, msgs) trades where it did at the beginning of 2004, while the Russell 2000 Index ($RUT.X) of small-cap stocks has advanced more than 45% in the same time frame.
There are lots of reasons why: low-cost, high-quality digital-video cameras that have enabled small private companies; technology-enabled piracy of costlier content; and the abundance of free porn on the Internet.
But new technology appears to offer new hope for porn profits. Innovations such as video on demand (VOD) and faster cell-phone Internet access mean consumers will be better able to get the kind of porn they want, when and where they want it. That should boost sales for the publicly traded adult-entertainment companies supplying these channels.
On demand in demand Playboy, New Frontier Media and other adult-video providers have sold pay-per-view content for years through cable and satellite partners such as Time Warner Cable (TWC, news, msgs), Comcast (CMCSA, news, msgs) and EchoStar Communications (DISH, news, msgs). But this delivery system has had one big shortcoming: Because specific content is pre-scheduled, it isn't always available when a user wants it.
B
ut video on demand solves the problem, and consumers have responded. As New Frontier Media delicately put it in a recent filing, "Instant start times assure that an impulse demand results in a transaction, whereas with pay-per-view, the scheduled start time may not be synchronized to a viewer's requirements."
Private Media's chief operating officer, Peter Cohen, says adult entertainment "is particularly an impulse buy. So the on-demand functionality of VOD suits our content very well."
The numbers are impressive. Pay-television revenue overall was up just 1% at New Frontier Media in the first quarter, but VOD revenue jumped 10%. In the second quarter, overall pay-TV revenue at the company fell 17%, but VOD revenue was up 18% at New Frontier's biggest cable partner, and VOD sales were up at all of its top 10 cable partners. At Playboy, revenue weakness at the magazine and in pay-per-view TV has been offset by strength in VOD sales.
VOD offers other distinct advantages for adult-entertainment providers. VOD broadcasts can't be copied, so piracy is reduced. Also, it's easier to track consumer interests and behaviors with VOD.
"You get better and more specific actionable data about what works, and we have been responding to that," Playboy Enterprises Chief Executive Christie Hefner said in a recent conference call.
Cable providers have been rolling out VOD in the U.S. for several years. However, it has reached less than half the households that will be able to get it, so there is plenty of room for growth. In Europe, the potential is even bigger because cable operators there have lagged on offering VOD. Now, a new technology making up for the shortfall should help adult-entertainment companies deliver porn to viewers in the VOD format: Internet protocol television, or IPTV.
Undressing Playboy's planPlayboy magazine is changing its digital business strategy and giving away more content online. The Wall Street Journal's Lee Hawkins explains why.
"Europe is projected to be the fastest-growing territory for this platform," Private Media's Cohen says. "Everybody has ramped up their activity with these new digital platforms. I think we will see it grow quite quickly now."
Multimedia Research estimates the number of IPTV subscribers in Europe will grow to more than 27 million by 2011 from about 4 million last year. To catch the trend, Private Media is busy forging alliances with the major telecom providers across Europe who are rolling out VOD. The company says it already has access to 75% to 100% of the current and prospective IPTV viewers in France and Germany.
Porn on the go I'm not sure I really get this one because the screens are so small, but more consumers are watching porn on mobile phones, especially in Europe, where carriers are more likely to offer it.
"It's highly, highly popular," says Tim Clausen, who heads the wireless division at Private Media, which is based in Barcelona, Spain. "People watch entire movies for an hour and a half on their mobile phone." He says revenue from cell-phone-based porn doubled last year to $2.8 million.
Juniper Research analyst Windsor Holden estimates consumers around the world will spend $1.8 billion on cell-phone porn this year. He thinks that will grow to $4 billion by 2012. Strategy Analytics, another research firm, forecasts the mobile-adult-services market will reach $5 billion worldwide by 2010. Holden chalks it up in part to the cell phone's "anytime, anywhere" availability.
"The mobile phone affords the user of mobile adult services the opportunity for privacy, which many users may find attractive," Holden says.
Private Media says its content is available to more than 745 million cell-phone users in 33 countries via 78 operators, and it expects big growth. "We think that wireless will be an explosive top-line revenue opportunity for the simple reason that the cell phone is the ubiquitous device in the world," Cohen says.
Consumers aren't just looking at pictures, watching video and downloading naughty ring tones or video games. "Adoption is really rising rapidly in Europe, and one of the key drivers is video chat," says Holden. Several services provide one-on-one video chat with models for $3 a minute, he says, and the average length of the chat is six to seven minutes.
Compared with Europe, U.S. demand has lagged because high-speed data connections aren't as prevalent and carriers are more reluctant to offer cell-phone porn. But Cohen thinks the rollout of faster data service in the U.S. and better age-verification systems will change that. "As those two obstacles get worked out, we see enormous upside," he says.
Internet imitators In the Internet space, adult-entertainment companies are busy copying successful mainstream models like the auction site eBay (EBAY, news, msgs), the virtual world Second Life and even the social-networking site MySpace.
Rick's Cabaret International (RICK, news, msgs), which owns and operates adult nightclubs, has set up NaughtyBids, the eBay of adult material. The Web site, however, brings in only a small portion of overall revenue. Instead, the company is growing by acquiring and opening more clubs.
Red Light Center, run by a company called Utherverse Digital, offers an adult version of Second Life, one of the popular Internet-based worlds in which people interact through virtual identities known as avatars.
Video on MSN Money
Undressing Playboy's planPlayboy magazine is changing its digital business strategy and giving away more content online. The Wall Street Journal's Lee Hawkins explains why.
Zivity lets models post their pictures and accept payments from users who like what they see. They can also chat with models in a format that resembles MySpace.
If these last two are commercial successes, I'd expect the public companies to make an acquisition or, more likely, roll out similar products. Indeed, Private Media says it plans to launch Internet community and interactive services in the next three to six months.
A caveat With the exception of Playboy, the public companies I've mentioned in this column are small -- small enough so that the attention this column generates could send their stocks temporarily higher. The key word here is "temporarily."
Typically, when an investment column moves a stock, it retraces. So that you don't wind up buying the spike and regretting it, I strongly urge you to avoid buying New Frontier Media above $6, Private Media above $3.30 and Rick's Cabaret above $15.50. It may pay to wait for pullbacks in both Private Media and Rick's Cabaret to even-lower levels, given that both stocks have advanced so much in the past few weeks.
At the time of publication, Michael Brush did not own or control shares of any companies mentioned in this column.
In an industry that counts on impulse buys, video on demand and faster cell-phone Internet access should be a boon for publicly traded adult-entertainment companies.
Technology has made pornography easier to produce and to distribute. By some estimates, pornography accounts for 40% of all Internet traffic and pay-TV sales. But, for shareholders at least, technology has yet to make pornography wildly profitable.
Playboy Enterprises (PLA, news, msgs) has seen its share price fall by 30% since the start of 2004, compared with a 39% gain in the S&P 500 Index ($INX). New Frontier Media (NOOF, news, msgs), a Boulder, Colo., business that distributes pornographic videos, trades lower than it did three years ago. And a smaller video distributor in Europe called Private Media (PRVT, news, msgs) trades where it did at the beginning of 2004, while the Russell 2000 Index ($RUT.X) of small-cap stocks has advanced more than 45% in the same time frame.
There are lots of reasons why: low-cost, high-quality digital-video cameras that have enabled small private companies; technology-enabled piracy of costlier content; and the abundance of free porn on the Internet.
But new technology appears to offer new hope for porn profits. Innovations such as video on demand (VOD) and faster cell-phone Internet access mean consumers will be better able to get the kind of porn they want, when and where they want it. That should boost sales for the publicly traded adult-entertainment companies supplying these channels.
On demand in demand Playboy, New Frontier Media and other adult-video providers have sold pay-per-view content for years through cable and satellite partners such as Time Warner Cable (TWC, news, msgs), Comcast (CMCSA, news, msgs) and EchoStar Communications (DISH, news, msgs). But this delivery system has had one big shortcoming: Because specific content is pre-scheduled, it isn't always available when a user wants it.
B
ut video on demand solves the problem, and consumers have responded. As New Frontier Media delicately put it in a recent filing, "Instant start times assure that an impulse demand results in a transaction, whereas with pay-per-view, the scheduled start time may not be synchronized to a viewer's requirements."
Private Media's chief operating officer, Peter Cohen, says adult entertainment "is particularly an impulse buy. So the on-demand functionality of VOD suits our content very well."
The numbers are impressive. Pay-television revenue overall was up just 1% at New Frontier Media in the first quarter, but VOD revenue jumped 10%. In the second quarter, overall pay-TV revenue at the company fell 17%, but VOD revenue was up 18% at New Frontier's biggest cable partner, and VOD sales were up at all of its top 10 cable partners. At Playboy, revenue weakness at the magazine and in pay-per-view TV has been offset by strength in VOD sales.
VOD offers other distinct advantages for adult-entertainment providers. VOD broadcasts can't be copied, so piracy is reduced. Also, it's easier to track consumer interests and behaviors with VOD.
"You get better and more specific actionable data about what works, and we have been responding to that," Playboy Enterprises Chief Executive Christie Hefner said in a recent conference call.
Cable providers have been rolling out VOD in the U.S. for several years. However, it has reached less than half the households that will be able to get it, so there is plenty of room for growth. In Europe, the potential is even bigger because cable operators there have lagged on offering VOD. Now, a new technology making up for the shortfall should help adult-entertainment companies deliver porn to viewers in the VOD format: Internet protocol television, or IPTV.
Undressing Playboy's planPlayboy magazine is changing its digital business strategy and giving away more content online. The Wall Street Journal's Lee Hawkins explains why.
"Europe is projected to be the fastest-growing territory for this platform," Private Media's Cohen says. "Everybody has ramped up their activity with these new digital platforms. I think we will see it grow quite quickly now."
Multimedia Research estimates the number of IPTV subscribers in Europe will grow to more than 27 million by 2011 from about 4 million last year. To catch the trend, Private Media is busy forging alliances with the major telecom providers across Europe who are rolling out VOD. The company says it already has access to 75% to 100% of the current and prospective IPTV viewers in France and Germany.
Porn on the go I'm not sure I really get this one because the screens are so small, but more consumers are watching porn on mobile phones, especially in Europe, where carriers are more likely to offer it.
"It's highly, highly popular," says Tim Clausen, who heads the wireless division at Private Media, which is based in Barcelona, Spain. "People watch entire movies for an hour and a half on their mobile phone." He says revenue from cell-phone-based porn doubled last year to $2.8 million.
Juniper Research analyst Windsor Holden estimates consumers around the world will spend $1.8 billion on cell-phone porn this year. He thinks that will grow to $4 billion by 2012. Strategy Analytics, another research firm, forecasts the mobile-adult-services market will reach $5 billion worldwide by 2010. Holden chalks it up in part to the cell phone's "anytime, anywhere" availability.
"The mobile phone affords the user of mobile adult services the opportunity for privacy, which many users may find attractive," Holden says.
Private Media says its content is available to more than 745 million cell-phone users in 33 countries via 78 operators, and it expects big growth. "We think that wireless will be an explosive top-line revenue opportunity for the simple reason that the cell phone is the ubiquitous device in the world," Cohen says.
Consumers aren't just looking at pictures, watching video and downloading naughty ring tones or video games. "Adoption is really rising rapidly in Europe, and one of the key drivers is video chat," says Holden. Several services provide one-on-one video chat with models for $3 a minute, he says, and the average length of the chat is six to seven minutes.
Compared with Europe, U.S. demand has lagged because high-speed data connections aren't as prevalent and carriers are more reluctant to offer cell-phone porn. But Cohen thinks the rollout of faster data service in the U.S. and better age-verification systems will change that. "As those two obstacles get worked out, we see enormous upside," he says.
Internet imitators In the Internet space, adult-entertainment companies are busy copying successful mainstream models like the auction site eBay (EBAY, news, msgs), the virtual world Second Life and even the social-networking site MySpace.
Rick's Cabaret International (RICK, news, msgs), which owns and operates adult nightclubs, has set up NaughtyBids, the eBay of adult material. The Web site, however, brings in only a small portion of overall revenue. Instead, the company is growing by acquiring and opening more clubs.
Red Light Center, run by a company called Utherverse Digital, offers an adult version of Second Life, one of the popular Internet-based worlds in which people interact through virtual identities known as avatars.
Video on MSN Money
Undressing Playboy's planPlayboy magazine is changing its digital business strategy and giving away more content online. The Wall Street Journal's Lee Hawkins explains why.
Zivity lets models post their pictures and accept payments from users who like what they see. They can also chat with models in a format that resembles MySpace.
If these last two are commercial successes, I'd expect the public companies to make an acquisition or, more likely, roll out similar products. Indeed, Private Media says it plans to launch Internet community and interactive services in the next three to six months.
A caveat With the exception of Playboy, the public companies I've mentioned in this column are small -- small enough so that the attention this column generates could send their stocks temporarily higher. The key word here is "temporarily."
Typically, when an investment column moves a stock, it retraces. So that you don't wind up buying the spike and regretting it, I strongly urge you to avoid buying New Frontier Media above $6, Private Media above $3.30 and Rick's Cabaret above $15.50. It may pay to wait for pullbacks in both Private Media and Rick's Cabaret to even-lower levels, given that both stocks have advanced so much in the past few weeks.
At the time of publication, Michael Brush did not own or control shares of any companies mentioned in this column.
WI-FI RABBIT 10-31-07
Hands-On Nabaztag 2 Wi-Fi Rabbit
I've been playing with the new Nabaztag for a few weeks, and I must say, this is one rabbit that'll keep you entertained for hours. As soon as I opened it, I headed to Nabaztag.com to configure my Wi-Fi settings so it could start updating me on everything. You see, Nabaztag is a Wi-Fi enabled bunny that can gather information from around the Internet, and reads it for you. If you want to know what's happening on your favorite blogs, you simply go to Nabaztag.com, add your favorite RSS feeds to your Nabcasts feeds, and it'll read the latest headlines every 20 minutes (you can change the frequency). That's only a fraction of what it can do. Once you become a Nabaztag owner, the customization possibilities are endless.Nabaztag has been around since 2005, but was recently upgraded in 2007 with even more features than before. The latest version has a microphone on its navel so you can talk to your rabbit. Anytime you press a button between its ears, and give him a command such as "weather", it's quick to respond. You can send voice messages to other Nabaztag owners by speaking into its navel, as well.
I think the most interesting feature are the NabZtamps created so Nabaztag can "sniff" objects. The new Nabaztag has an RFID tag reader in his nose, so he can recognize objects embedded with NabZtamps stickers. Why would you want him to sniff objects? Well, you can assign an action or behavior to each stamp so the next time you wave, say for example a set of keys, he'll alert your personal friends when you get home or start reading your favorite Nabcasts. Making friends internationally is easy, since the little genius speaks 16 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, and of course English.
Not only does it communicate verbally, but it also communicates physically by moving its ears or visually by lighting up. What I love about this smart toy is the passion the Nabaztag-owning community shares. Most owners personalize their bunny by dressing it up in their own creations, or design new applications to give him even more functionality. These Nabaznauts have set up hundreds of websites, forums, blogs, YouTube channels, and they even have a Flickr stream going. Like I said, the entertainment is endless, which is why I took so long to write this quick review.
Which brings me to another point. While you may initially want Nabaztag to read all your favorite blogs, you'll have to be careful not to overload yourself. I had to turn it down a few times, because I needed to concentrate on my work or was on a phone call. I recommend you subscribe to only a handful of Nabcasts, or set it to sleep during your busiest part of the day. I especially think it's great that others can send messages to your bunny via widgets (it has a Yahoo! Widget) or by signing up for a Nabaztag account. Like I said, the possibilities are endless so you'll have plenty of things to discover and people to meet once you become a Nabaztag owner. If you want more details about this curious bunny, make sure you check out Nabaztag.com.
IS IT BIGFOOT? 10-31-07
RIDGWAY, Pa. - It's furry and walks on all fours. Beyond that, about the only thing certain about the critter photographed by a hunter's camera is that some people have gotten the notion it could be a Sasquatch, or bigfoot. Others say it's just a bear with a bad skin infection.
Rick Jacobs says he got the pictures from a camera with an automatic trigger that he fastened to a tree in the Allegheny National Forest, about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, hoping to photograph deer.
"We couldn't figure out what they were," Jacobs said of the images captured on Sept. 16. "I've been hunting for years and I've never seen anything like this."
He contacted the Bigfoot Research Organization, which pursues reports of a legendary two-legged creature that some people believe lives in parts of the U.S. and Canada.
"It appears to be a primate-like animal. In my opinion, it appears to be a juvenile Sasquatch," said Paul Majeta of the bigfoot group.
However, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has a more conventional opinion. Agency spokesman Jerry Feaser said conservation officers routinely trap bears to be tagged and often see animals that look like the photos.
"There is no question it is a bear with a severe case of mange," Feaser told The Bradford Era.
FORGOTTEN PRESIDENTS
We don't recall ever seeing them on our coins, stamps, or monuments, but we're told the following seven men were once president of the United States. Go figure! 
Former presidents Chester Arthur, Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes
Herbert Hoover (President #31, 1929--1933)
Although Herbert Hoover won the 1928 presidential election with almost 60 percent of the vote, today he's basically remembered as a dam. Actually, many Americans probably think he was an FBI director or the guy who invented a vacuum.
But Hoover was, in fact, a U.S. president -- and an interesting one to boot. Orphaned at age 9, he worked and scraped his way into the newly minted Stanford University to study mining engineering.
There, he married Lou Henry, the only female geology student at the school, and the pair traveled the world evaluating mining sites and learning languages. (In the White House, they often spoke in Mandarin when they didn't want staff eavesdropping.)
Hoover's successful coordination of the U.S. Food Administration during WWI paved his way to the Oval Office. Although massively popular early in his term, a little thing called the Great Depression came along and seriously soured his approval rating. Herbert battled bravely against the dusty tide of poverty, but his programs were largely ineffective.
Sorry, Herbert. Great dam, though.
Martin Van Buren (President #8, 1837--1841)
Despite earning catchy nicknames such as "The Little Magician" and "The Red Fox of Kinderhook" on the political battlefield, M.V.B. is far from the MVP of the American presidency.
One title he can claim, though, is that of the first president not of British descent. Van Buren was the son of a Dutch tavern owner and gained his taste for politics listening to debates in the rowdy rooms of the family saloon.
A self-taught lawyer, the politically adept Van Buren quickly rose up the governmental ranks, landing a spot as President Andrew Jackson's secretary of state in 1828. By keeping clear of the Cabinet infighting that marred Jackson's first term, Van Buren replaced John Calhoun as Jackson's vice president in the second term.
In 1836, he won the presidency, but soon fizzled out in a daze of leadership defeats and ineffective policies. Don't look for him on the penny any time soon.
Warren Harding (President #29, 1921--1923)
Warren G. Harding is generally regarded as the worst president ever. He was disappointing from the get-go, as the very basis of his campaign was boring. Harding ran on the promise of a "return to normalcy," which he (somehow) felt people craved following Woodrow Wilson's bold and visionary term.
To make things worse, Harding ran the White House like a kind of boys' club, where he and some friends known as the "Ohio Gang" enjoyed drinking, playing golf, and cheating on their wives. (Harding is widely rumored to have paid a gambling debt with antique White House china.)
After admitting to friends that he felt overmatched by the job of president, Harding gave his Cabinet free reign and treated the presidency as more of a ceremonial post.
Just as the friends he'd appointed were being nailed for corruption one after another, Harding contracted what doctors assumed was ptomaine poisoning and died of a related heart attack. No autopsy was performed, but rumors abounded that his wife poisoned him to protect what legacy he had left.
Chester Arthur (President #21, 1881--1885)
Most people don't know ol' Chesty for anything other than his mammoth moustache. But he should be remembered as a guy who rose to the occasion.
As a young man, Arthur worked on civil rights cases in New York before succumbing to the corrupt New York political machine of Roscoe "Boss" Conkling. (How anyone could fail to detect corruption in someone named Roscoe "Boss" Conkling is beyond us.)
In 1881, Arthur became vice president under James Garfield, but soon butted heads with the president over an appointment that sapped Conkling's power. In fact, Arthur and Garfield were hardly communicating when, a few months later, Garfield was assassinated, and Arthur suddenly became the big cheese.
Instead of behaving like a pawn as everyone expected, Arthur became a man of the people, taking steps to cut back on cronyism and rebuffing pressures from big business. And what do you call him? The president with the big moustache. Nice going!
Millard Fillmore (President #13, 1850--1853)
Today, Millard Fillmore's name is synonymous with overlooked. Need proof? In February 2006, a group called the Friends of Millard Fillmore will host the 38th annual FOMF Trivia Hunt, a contest celebrating obscure knowledge.
Fillmore was born in 1800 to a destitute family, but thanks to a merciless work ethic, he taught himself to read and eventually became a lawyer.
That quickly segued into politics, and in 1848, the Whigs ran Fillmore for VP alongside Zachary Taylor. The pair won the election, but remained divided by their views on slavery (Taylor being a southern slave owner, and Fillmore, well, not).
When Taylor died, Fillmore tried to appease the North and South by supporting the Compromise of 1850. Unfortunately, the move alienated the North and created a fair share of enemies on both sides. Thus tainted, he lost several bids for re-election and died of a stroke in 1874.
Rutherford B. Hayes (President #19, 1877--1881)
Rutherford B. Hayes is slightly more memorable due to the catchiness of his name, but he's still more than obscure enough to make our list.
Raised by a single mother, Hayes worked his way up in the world from next to nothing, studying at Harvard and practicing law in Cincinnati.
When the Civil War erupted, Hayes was 39 and a father of three. Nonetheless, he volunteered to fight and quickly distinguished himself as a valuable leader.
After parlaying this fame into a Senate seat and then the governorship of Ohio, he received the Republican presidential nomination in 1876. Until the chad-alicious scandal of 2000, this was perhaps America's most contested election --ending with a special Congressional committee declaring Hayes the winner over Samuel J. Tilden by one electoral vote.
Once he took office, Hayes got right to work healing a nation still battered by the Civil War. He later claimed to have inherited the country "divided and distracted" and left it "united, harmonious and prosperous."
Unfortunately for ol' Rutherford, harmony and prosperity alone won't get your mug on Mount Rushmore.
John Tyler (President #10, 1841--1845)
John Tyler was up against it from the start. For one thing, he only got to be president because he was the VP under William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia following his inauguration speech.
Let's put it this way: When your nicknames include "His Accidency," you're not destined to make a splash.
After Harrison's unscheduled departure, Tyler's orchestration of an orderly transfer of power was his only recognized political success. Tyler didn't want to alienate Harrison's supporters, so he retained the departed president's Cabinet. Unfortunately, they had little respect for their new leader. When he once vetoed a bill they favored, all but one of them resigned. That's pretty much how the presidency went for Tyler.
In fact, his own Whig party tried to have him impeached. Tyler gamely ran for re-election in 1844, but was persuaded to withdraw. Broke, Tyler returned to his Virginia plantation and spent a lot of time supporting the secession of the South. (That didn't work out so well either.)
PICKLE ASSAULT 10-31-07
Guess they weren’t the sweet variety ...
Man gets one year probation in pickle-assault caseupdated 3:43 p.m. ET, Tues., Oct. 30, 2007
NILES, Michigan - A judge gave a 35-year-old man probation in a case that police said involved an assault with pickles.
According to police reports, the pickle problems began when Bobby Lee Bolen was at his then-friend Jody Lee's home on Aug. 20.
Bolen went to the refrigerator and helped himself to some pickles. According to the report, Lee told Bolen he could not afford to feed everyone and not to eat his pickles. Bolen then began yelling and swearing and stormed out, according to the report.
Later, Bolen barged back into the house and got into an argument with Lee. Lee told police Bolen slammed him down on the couch and threw two large pickles at him and said, "Here's your damn pickles."
Bolen also shoved former friend J.W. Romanski III and beat Lee with a telephone when he tried to call emergency authorities, according to the report. Two counts involving Bolen's assaults were dismissed as was a charge of cutting or interfering with phone lines.
"If this is not the silliest case I've ever seen in this courtroom, it certainly is in the Top 10," Berrien Trial Court Judge Scott Schofield said. "The fact that it's silly doesn't mean that it's not serious."
Defense attorney Robert Lutz said alcohol appeared to be at the root of Bolen's problems.
Bolen's sentence included 54 days in jail with credit for 54 days served and one year of probation.
FLYING CARS ARE COMING 10-31-07
3 Flying Cars Coming to a Skyway Near You: Progress Report
There's hope yet for the flying car. Really. The Jetsons-era dream of personal air vehicles (PAVs) has recently received a few gasps of fresh air. An advocacy group, the CAFE Foundation, has launched a $250,000 PAV challenge for new and interesting flight concepts. Plus, companies from the aviation (Boeing) and automotive (Honda) industries are pursuing mainstream airborne-vehicle technology, though no designs or deadlines have been announced.
In the meantime, several independent companies have been researching and developing fly/drive vehicles you might see flying — someday — toward a driveway near you.
Moller Skycar M400
With production versions promised by 2010, this four-passenger beauty is the latest in a line of Moller Skycars dating back to 1962. Using four pairs of Wankel engines, the vehicle is designed for vertical takeoff and landing, and may eventually be capable of fully automated flight.
RANGE: 750 miles
ALTITUDE: Below 36,000 feet
TOP AIRSPEED: 375 mph
PRICE: $995,000. A $100,000 deposit holds one of the first 100 cars, refundable if FAA certification does not occur by Dec. 31, 2010.
PROGRESS: Tethered full-scale prototypes have hovered several feet off the ground.
POTENTIAL DRAWBACKS: Frequent delays and misleading claims led to an SEC fine in 2003.
Labiche Aerospace Flying Sports Car FSC-1
The four-passenger FSC-1 has been in development since the late 1980s, and reached preproduction in 2007. Like a Transformer toy, the FSC-1 turns from car to single-propeller airplane in 30 seconds. A true hybrid, it will operate via existing small airports and highways.
RANGE: 950 miles
ALTITUDE: Below 34,000 feet
TOP AIRSPEED: 275 mph
PRICE: $175,000. The FSC-1 is a kit, assembly required. The $20,000 deposit is refundable if performance benchmarks aren't met.
PROGRESS: A prototype will be on display in Los Angeles this year; production is slated for 2008.
POTENTIAL DRAWBACKS: Plans to fly it to the 2007 Oshkosh air show were scrapped due to testing "conflicts."
Urban Aeronautics X-Hawk
Conceived by a former Boeing engineer in 2001, the 11-seater X-Hawk is marketed as, among other things, an emergency vehicle (to go where choppers can't). It uses enclosed turbine-powered, ducted fans for lift and a system of vanes for stability and maneuvering.
RANGE: 380 miles
ALTITUDE: Below 12,000 feet
TOP AIRSPEED: 161 mph
PRICE: $5 million to $6 million. The X-Hawk's price reflects its proposed emphasis: fewer civilian thrill rides, more military or medical response.
PROGRESS: Exists largely as a set of plastic moldings and a virtual computer simulation.
POTENTIAL DRAWBACKS: Based on 1960s "Air Jeep" technology, which has yet to prove itself in 50 years
Friday, September 28, 2007
MEN HAPPIER THAN WOMAN 9-28-07
He’s Happier, She’s Less So
Last year, a team of researchers added a novel twist to something known as a time-use survey. Instead of simply asking people what they had done over the course of their day, as pollsters have been doing since the 1960s, the researchers also asked how people felt during each activity. Were they happy? Interested? Tired? Stressed?
Why do you think men now appear to be happier than women?
Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.
Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist working with four psychologists on the time-use research team, figures that there is a simple explanation for the difference. For a woman, time with her parents often resembles work, whether it’s helping them pay bills or plan a family gathering. “For men, it tends to be sitting on the sofa and watching football with their dad,” said Mr. Krueger, who, when not crunching data, enjoys watching the New York Giants with his father.
This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.
Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists at the University of Pennsylvania (and a couple), have looked at the traditional happiness data, in which people are simply asked how satisfied they are with their overall lives. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.
Mr. Krueger, analyzing time-use studies over the last four decades, has found an even starker pattern. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.
Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.
These trends are reminiscent of the idea of “the second shift,” the name of a 1989 book by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, arguing that modern women effectively had to hold down two jobs. The first shift was at the office, and the second at home.
But researchers who have looked at time-use data say the second-shift theory misses an important detail. Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.
What has changed — and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends — is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents). They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.
Mr. Krueger’s data, for instance, shows that the average time devoted to dusting has fallen significantly in recent decades. There haven’t been any dust-related technological breakthroughs, so houses are probably just dirtier than they used to be. I imagine that the new American dustiness affects women’s happiness more than men’s.
Ms. Stevenson was recently having drinks with a business school graduate who came up with a nice way of summarizing the problem. Her mother’s goals in life, the student said, were to have a beautiful garden, a well-kept house and well-adjusted children who did well in school. “I sort of want all those things, too,” the student said, as Ms. Stevenson recalled, “but I also want to have a great career and have an impact on the broader world.”
It’s telling that there is also a happiness gap between boys and girls in high school. As life has generally gotten better over the last generation — less crime, longer-living grandparents and much cooler gadgets — male high school seniors have gotten happier. About 25 percent say they are very satisfied with their lives, up from 16 percent in 1976. Roughly 22 percent of senior girls now give that answer, unchanged from the 1970s.
When Ms. Stevenson and I were talking last week about possible explanations, she mentioned her “hottie theory.” It’s based on an April article in this newspaper by Sara Rimer, about a group of incredibly impressive teenage girls in Newton, Mass. The girls were getting better grades than the boys, playing varsity sports, helping to run the student government and doing community service. Yet one girl who had gotten a perfect 2,400 on her college entrance exams noted that she and her friends still felt pressure to be “effortlessly hot.”
As Ms. Stevenson, who’s 36, said: “When I was in high school, it was clear being a hottie was the most important thing, and it’s not that it’s any less important today. It’s that other things have become more important. And, frankly, people spent a lot of time trying to be a hottie when I was in high school. So I don’t know where they find the time today.”
The two new papers — Mr. Krueger’s will be published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and the Stevenson-Wolfers one is still in draft form — are part of a burst of happiness research in recent years. There is no question that the research has its limitations. Happiness, of course, is highly subjective
A big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago — despite far more discrimination — is probably that they had narrower ambitions, Ms. Stevenson says. Many compared themselves only to other women, rather than to men as well. This doesn’t mean they were better off back then.
But it does show just how incomplete the gender revolution has been. Although women have flooded into the work force, American society hasn’t fully come to grips with the change. The United States still doesn’t have universal preschool, and, in contrast to other industrialized countries, there is no guaranteed paid leave for new parents.
Government policy isn’t the only problem, either. Inside of families, men still haven’t figured out how to shoulder their fair share of the household burden. Instead, we’re spending more time on the phone and in front of the television.
This weekend, I think I may volunteer to do a little dusting.
Last year, a team of researchers added a novel twist to something known as a time-use survey. Instead of simply asking people what they had done over the course of their day, as pollsters have been doing since the 1960s, the researchers also asked how people felt during each activity. Were they happy? Interested? Tired? Stressed?
Why do you think men now appear to be happier than women?
Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.
Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist working with four psychologists on the time-use research team, figures that there is a simple explanation for the difference. For a woman, time with her parents often resembles work, whether it’s helping them pay bills or plan a family gathering. “For men, it tends to be sitting on the sofa and watching football with their dad,” said Mr. Krueger, who, when not crunching data, enjoys watching the New York Giants with his father.
This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.
Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, economists at the University of Pennsylvania (and a couple), have looked at the traditional happiness data, in which people are simply asked how satisfied they are with their overall lives. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.
Mr. Krueger, analyzing time-use studies over the last four decades, has found an even starker pattern. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.
Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.
These trends are reminiscent of the idea of “the second shift,” the name of a 1989 book by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, arguing that modern women effectively had to hold down two jobs. The first shift was at the office, and the second at home.
But researchers who have looked at time-use data say the second-shift theory misses an important detail. Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.
What has changed — and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends — is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did (including helping their aging parents). They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.
Mr. Krueger’s data, for instance, shows that the average time devoted to dusting has fallen significantly in recent decades. There haven’t been any dust-related technological breakthroughs, so houses are probably just dirtier than they used to be. I imagine that the new American dustiness affects women’s happiness more than men’s.
Ms. Stevenson was recently having drinks with a business school graduate who came up with a nice way of summarizing the problem. Her mother’s goals in life, the student said, were to have a beautiful garden, a well-kept house and well-adjusted children who did well in school. “I sort of want all those things, too,” the student said, as Ms. Stevenson recalled, “but I also want to have a great career and have an impact on the broader world.”
It’s telling that there is also a happiness gap between boys and girls in high school. As life has generally gotten better over the last generation — less crime, longer-living grandparents and much cooler gadgets — male high school seniors have gotten happier. About 25 percent say they are very satisfied with their lives, up from 16 percent in 1976. Roughly 22 percent of senior girls now give that answer, unchanged from the 1970s.
When Ms. Stevenson and I were talking last week about possible explanations, she mentioned her “hottie theory.” It’s based on an April article in this newspaper by Sara Rimer, about a group of incredibly impressive teenage girls in Newton, Mass. The girls were getting better grades than the boys, playing varsity sports, helping to run the student government and doing community service. Yet one girl who had gotten a perfect 2,400 on her college entrance exams noted that she and her friends still felt pressure to be “effortlessly hot.”
As Ms. Stevenson, who’s 36, said: “When I was in high school, it was clear being a hottie was the most important thing, and it’s not that it’s any less important today. It’s that other things have become more important. And, frankly, people spent a lot of time trying to be a hottie when I was in high school. So I don’t know where they find the time today.”
The two new papers — Mr. Krueger’s will be published in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity and the Stevenson-Wolfers one is still in draft form — are part of a burst of happiness research in recent years. There is no question that the research has its limitations. Happiness, of course, is highly subjective
A big reason that women reported being happier three decades ago — despite far more discrimination — is probably that they had narrower ambitions, Ms. Stevenson says. Many compared themselves only to other women, rather than to men as well. This doesn’t mean they were better off back then.
But it does show just how incomplete the gender revolution has been. Although women have flooded into the work force, American society hasn’t fully come to grips with the change. The United States still doesn’t have universal preschool, and, in contrast to other industrialized countries, there is no guaranteed paid leave for new parents.
Government policy isn’t the only problem, either. Inside of families, men still haven’t figured out how to shoulder their fair share of the household burden. Instead, we’re spending more time on the phone and in front of the television.
This weekend, I think I may volunteer to do a little dusting.
WIERD WORLD RECORDS 9-28-07
LONDON (Reuters) - Australian John Allwood smashed 40 watermelons with his head in just one minute.
Using only one hand, Germany's Thomas Vogel unfastened 56 bras in 60 seconds.When it comes to the world's weirdest achievers, nothing beats the ultimate accolade -- a place in Guinness World Records for demonstrating bizarre skills.
Nothing is too wacky.
Can you catch 77 grapes in your mouth in under a minute, keep nine yo-yo's spinning at the same time, hold your breath for more than 14 minutes or throw a washing machine?
Then Guinness has a spot for you.
The annual compendium, whose latest edition is published on Friday, even has a section entitled Trivial Pursuits.
Few would argue with the title as Guinness lists the globe's finest practitioners at putting the cover on a duvet, kicking yourself in the head and throwing paper aircraft into a bucket.
Italian Michele Santana wins an entry for typing 57 books backwards.
Indian yoga instructor G.P Vijayakumar snorted eight fish up through his mouth and out of his nostrils in a minute.
American Jackie Bibby shared his bath with 75 live western diamondback rattlesnakes.
The latest edition also has a four-page pullout of the world's grossest records.
China's Wei Shengchu gains notoriety for most acupuncture needles in the head and face.
Frenchman Michel Lotito claimed the weirdest diet -- over the years he consumed 128 bicycles and 15 supermarket trolleys which he washed down with six chandeliers, two beds and a pair of skis.
Natasha Veruschka won Guinness immortality by swallowing 13 swords at the Third Annual Sideshow Gathering and Sword Swallowers Convention in Pennsylvania.
Few could equal the bizarre feat of China's Dong Changsheng -- he pulled a 1.5 tonne car using ropes hooked onto his lower eyelids.
In the mass participation category, 3,541 Philippine women in Manila shared the record for the most women ever to have breastfed their babies simultaneously.
The top prize for survival has to go to American park ranger Roy C.Sullivan -- he was struck by lightning seven times.
Each strike took its toll -- he lost eyebrows and a toe nail as well as suffering singed hair and chest burns.
He died in 1993 -- not killed by lightning but by his own hand after reportedly being rejected in love.
METEORITE CRASH 9-28-07
'Meteorite' Crash Breeds Mass Hysteria
On what started as a normal Saturday night one week ago, residents of a small, remote Peruvian town saw a bright light streak across the sky, heard a resounding bang and suddenly found themselves at the center of a media frenzy.
Initial suspicions of an airplane crash quickly spiraled into widespread reports that a meteorite had plummeted to Earth and left a smoking, boiling crater whose supposedly noxious fumes were reported to have sickened curious locals who went to peer at the hole.
Despite doubts expressed by geologists that the crater was actually caused by a meteorite and firm explanations that a meteorite would not even emit fumes and that the "sickness" was likely a case of mass hysteria, numerous onlookers far and wide were fascinated by the idea that this event could be some real-life "Andromeda Strain" (the 1969 novel by Michael Crichton), where a mysterious rock falling to Earth from outerspace made anyone who went near it ill.
So what is it about things falling from the sky that fills us with such fear that we can make ourselves sick with panic?
Mass hysteria
Media reports of the number of locals afflicted by a "mysterious disease"--with symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore throats--after visiting the crater figured in every news article about the Aug. 15 event, with some reporting that as many as 600 people had fallen ill.
But doctors who visited the site told the Associated Press they found no evidence that the crater had actually sickened such a large number of people.
If noxious fumes did emanate from the crater, they were most likely the result of a hydrothermal explosion that could have actually formed the crater, or were released from the ground when the meteorite struck, if in fact one did, according to many geologists.
Arsenic is found in the subsoil in that area of Peru and often contaminates the drinking water there, according to Peruvian geologists quoted on Sept. 21 by National Geographic News. Arsenic fumes released from the crater could have sickened locals who went to look, said one geologist who examined the site.
Some health officials suggest that the symptoms described by the locals, the large number of people reporting symptoms, and the apparently rapid spread have all the hallmarks of a case of mass hysteria.
"Those who say they are affected are the product of a collective psychosis," Jorge Lopez Tejada, health department chief in Puno, the nearest city, told the Los Angeles Times.
This psychosis could have begun as a result of fear of the meteorite and the mysterious "disease" on the part of the residents and spread as official and media reports seemed to confirm it and give it credence.
"The Peruvian event seems to be a rare case where we may be witnessing collective anxiety that is approaching near hysteria," said Benny Peiser, a social anthropologist at John Moores University in England. "The major[ity] of the affected Peruvian town hinted that some of the mass anxiety is due to fear of imminent impacts and psychological stress which is not surprising given the premature speculation and media hype."
Fear of outer space
Fear of a meteorite impact is nothing new--humans have long looked to the heavens with a wary eye.
"The fear of cosmic disaster, in particular cometary impacts, has existed in all cultures for millennia," Peiser told SPACE.com
But the space age revealed just how many dangers, including comets, meteors, asteroids, and cosmic rays, await us in the final frontier.
"Only since the late 20th century, humankind has become aware of the risk posed by asteroids and comets," Peiser said. "Unfortunately, this risk has been wildly exaggerated by popular culture."
Our curiosity and fear of impact events has increased their coverage by the world media, Peiser says, which in turn has increased the number of meteorite impact reports, even when the evidence doesn't point that way.
"In recent years, there have been numerous cases where alleged meteorite falls were linked to mysterious explosions on the ground--only to be proven wrong," Peiser said. "One of the main reasons for the significant increase of such claims is almost certainly due to the growing media interest in the cosmic impact risk. It is part of human nature-- and extremely tempting for the news media--to hype any event that initially looks mysterious."
While this fear is normal and understandable, it's been blown out of proportion so that the public thinks that impact risks are higher than they are, Peiser argues.
"Most people are simply not aware that we are making enormous progress in finding and identifying the population of Near Earth Objects and that the impact risk is thus diminishing year by year," Peiser said.
And when meteorites have struck, they have never carried any hint of some mysterious space disease.
"I don't know of any known record of a meteorite landing that emitted odors so noxious that people got sick from it," said geologist Larry Grossman of the University of Chicago.
So much for the Andromeda Strain.
MICHAEL VICK TEST POSITIVE 9-28-07
Falcons QB Michael Vick tests positive for marijuana; judge imposes new restrictions |
| By HANK KURZ Jr., Associated Press Writer September 27, 2007 RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Michael Vick is now likely one misstep from jail. The disgraced Atlanta Falcons quarterback tested positive for marijuana earlier this month, a violation of the conditions of his release as he awaits sentencing in federal court on a dogfighting charge that already jeopardizes his freedom and career. Now, he's incurred the ire of the judge who could sentence him to up to five years in prison in the dogfighting case. On the day of Vick's guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson warned that he wouldn't be amused by any additional trouble. Hudson, who will sentence Vick on Dec. 10, on Wednesday ordered him confined to his Virginia home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. with electronic monitoring. He also must submit to random drug testing. If Vick fails another drug test, he likely will wind up like co-defendant Quanis Phillips -- incarcerated since his Aug. 17 plea hearing. Phillips failed a drug test when he had the electronic monitoring and random drug testing requirements. Vick's positive urine sample was submitted Sept. 13, according to a document by a federal probation officer that was filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday. Because Vick violated the conditions of his release, Hudson could take that into consideration during sentencing, said Linda Malone, a criminal procedure expert and Marshall-Wythe Foundation professor of law at the College of William and Mary. "Every judge considers pretty seriously if they feel that the defendant has flaunted the conditions for release," she said. "It's certainly not a smart thing to do." Especially not when his behavior is being watched so closely, not only by the court that allowed him to remain free, but by the public whose forgiveness he's seeking. In Atlanta, Vick's one-time teammates tried to distances themselves from his latest troubles. "That's the last thing I'm worried about," linebacker Keith Brooking said at the Falcons' suburban practice facility. "We're 0-3. We're trying to get a win." Safety Lawyer Milloy agreed. "I just want to play ball," he said. "I'm so tired of talking about everything else, stuff we can't control that has nothing to do with us." The failed drug test is just the latest legal trouble for the 27-year-old Vick. On Tuesday, Vick was indicted on state charges of beating or killing or causing dogs to fight other dogs and engaging in or promoting dogfighting. Each felony is punishable by up to five years in prison. His arraignment on that is set for Oct. 3. The former Virginia Tech star was placed under pretrial release supervision by U.S. Magistrate Dennis Dohnal in July. The restrictions included refraining from use or unlawful possession of narcotic drugs or other controlled substances. The random drug testing ordered Wednesday could include urine testing, the wearing of a sweat patch, a remote alcohol testing system or any form of prohibited substance screening or testing. Hudson's order also requires Vick to participate in inpatient or outpatient substance therapy and mental health counseling if the pretrial services officer or supervising officer deem it appropriate. Vick must pay for the treatment. Vick's attorney, Billy Martin, also is representing Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, who pleaded guilty in an airport sex sting. During a press conference about Craig, Martin was asked to comment on Vick. He deflected the question, saying only, "I'm sure that in the future we'll have something to say regarding Mr. Vick, but not now." In January, Vick was cleared by police of any wrongdoing after his water bottle was seized by security at Miami International Airport. Police said it smelled of marijuana and had a hidden compartment that contained a "small amount of dark particulate." Lab tests found no evidence of drugs, and Vick explained that he used the secret compartment to carry jewelry. The federal dogfighting case began in late April when authorities conducting a drug investigation of Vick's cousin raided the property Vick owns in Surry County and seized dozens of dogs, most of them pit bulls, and equipment associated with dogfighting. Vick initially denied any knowledge of the enterprise, then pledged after he was charged that he would fight to clear his name. After Phillips and two other co-defendants pleaded guilty, Vick followed suit and admitted in a written plea to bankrolling the enterprise and helping to kill eight dogs that performed poorly. Vick was the only defendant not placed on electronic monitoring at the arraignments because he was the only one with no criminal record, the U.S. Attorney's office said. Associated Press Writer Kristen Gelineau in Richmond contributed to this report |
MEN'S HEALTH 9-28-07
Just as most men believe they possess a keen sense of humor, most men assume they are reasonably strong. Their muscle mass — the aggregate of muscle tissue they have built over a lifetime, enabling them to support their bones, fill the legs of their jeans, and lift the heavy end of a sofa — is at least adequate, relative to other men their age. Before my meeting with Gianni Maddalozzo, PhD, an exercise physiologist at Oregon State University, I was one of those men. After our meeting, I still think I have a pretty good sense of humor.
Maddalozzo's research focuses on the study of osteoporosis and muscle strength in adults ages 40 to 80. Most of his subjects suffer from advanced sarcopenia, the loss of muscle mass that occurs naturally — and inevitably — with age. Sarcopenia, in other words, is the scientific term for a phenomenon that Shakespeare identifies with the sixth age of man: the gray, traditionally enfeebled years of the "shrunk shank."
Compared with sarcopenia, other sneaky scourges of the middle years, such as arterial plaque buildup and prostate enlargement, announce their presence with a fanfare of symptoms. But sarcopenia creeps by in imperceptible increments, stealing a fifth of a pound of muscle a year, from ages 25 to 50, and then it picks up a dreadful, yet still mostly silent, velocity. The condition subsequently bleeds a man of up to a pound of muscle a year, a loss he is unlikely to notice until it's too late. "You haven't gotten any thinner, because the pounds of muscle are typically replaced by pounds of fat," explains Maddalozzo. "But sarcopenia is progressing all the time. One day you trip and fall and suffer a fracture of your hip. Then, when you try to rehab after hip-replacement surgery, you discover that you have virtually no muscle mass to build on."
While listening to the professor, I reflexively probe my thigh, sounding the depth and texture of my quadriceps muscle. By serving up a hypothetical untrained victim, I tell myself, Maddalozzo has provided a worst-case scenario. I, by contrast, have trained plenty in my lifetime: For the past 35 years, since my college football and lacrosse days, I may not have darkened a weight-room door, but I run 20 miles a week, and my body weight remains under control, as does my total cholesterol, blood pressure, and resting pulse rate. I had smugly assumed that my skinny butt was covered when it came to exercise. But now I know that I had only been drifting in a state of muscle-mass denial. These midlife realizations brought me to the Bone Research Lab at the university's campus in Corvallis, where Maddalozzo has offered to assess my state of muscular fitness and prescribe an anti-sarcopenia strength-training regimen.
Despite (or perhaps because of) its universal, inexorable nature, sarcopenia, until recently, did not get much respect. Indeed, until 1988, the condition lacked its own scientific name. "Historically, the scientific community has taken muscle for granted," concedes William Kraemer, PhD, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut. Perhaps more tellingly, sarcopenia's proven antidote — resistance training — will never make a dime for a pharmaceutical company. Scientists such as Kraemer, Maddalozzo, and a cadre of others are at the forefront of a movement that is redefining the importance of muscle mass in terms of overall health, not simply performance or vanity.
Recent research shows that diminished muscle strength and mass are empirically linked to declines in the immune system and the onset of heart disease and diabetes, not to mention weaker bones, stiffer joints, and slumping postures. Muscle mass has also been shown to play a central role in protein metabolism, which is particularly important in the response to stress, and decreased muscle mass correlates with a decline in overall metabolic rate (muscle mass burns more calories at rest than fat does). Further research is expected to show measureable links between diminished muscle mass and cancer mortality. The thinking about muscles and resistance training, in short, is reaching critical mass, and a major shift in the American fitness paradigm is under way. Along with this increasing emphasis on resistance training, there is an increasing awareness about the nutritional factors that can complement muscle growth, namely increasing daily intake of protein.
"In the last 20 years, we have come full circle," says Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, PhD, a professor of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois and a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. "We used to discourage older adults from lifting heavy weights. Now we're telling them they can't maintain overall health without it. After age 50, you can't get by just doing aerobic exercise." Although it's not explicit yet in the government's overall health guidelines, agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommend a couple of rounds of resistance training a week. "Muscle function can improve — sometimes robustly — with resistance training, even after the onset of sarcopenia," says Robert Wolfe, PhD, a professor of geriatrics at the University of Arkansas. "But it is far more effective to begin resistance training before the process gains momentum. Intervention in the middle years is necessary."
The muscles of most men reach maximum size (or, strictly speaking, attain the maximum number of fibers per muscle) at age 25. From that lamentably early peak, a long, gradual decline ensues. Over the next 25 years, the muscles lose approximately 10 percent of their fibers. Then, starting around age 50, things go to hell. The body's production of testosterone, human growth hormone, and DHEA ebbs, and the motor cells of your nervous system, which spider out from the spinal cord to control the contraction of muscle fibers during physical activity, deteriorate rapidly. As the motor cells die, so do the fibers to which they're attached, especially type II or "fast-twitch" fibers, the ones employed for short bursts of anaerobic power. For instance, if your biceps consist of 90 fibers when you're 50 years old, by age 80, that number will be closer to 50 fibers, most of them feeble type "slow-twitch" fibers.
It's through the study of sarcopenia that a greater appreciation of muscle mass is evolving. Two seminal works, "Starvation in Man," an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1970, and Hunger Disease: Studies by the Jewish Physicians in the Warsaw Ghetto, a book published in 1979, show that the depletion of muscle mass is the cause of death in human starvation. This is because essential organs and tissues such as the brain, heart, and liver rely on a steady supply of amino acids to synthesize new proteins and maintain function. Normally, dietary protein supplies these amino acids. Under duress, however, these organs maintain homeostasis by drawing protein from the muscles. Our skeletal muscle mass, besides powering all of our movements, also serves as a reservoir for our vital organs. And like all reservoirs, this one can run low — or, in the case of starvation, run dry.
Less dramatic maladies also demonstrate a deep relationship with sarcopenia. "Not surprisingly," observes Wolfe, "individuals with limited reserves of muscle mass respond poorly to stress." A 2000 study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science examining lung-cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, for instance, showed that the recurrence of cancer was predicted by levels of body protein. In 2004, a study in the Annals of Medicine demonstrated a clear link between diminished muscle mass and cardiac failure. And a 2006 study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that survival from severe burns was lowest among individuals with reduced muscle mass.
In 2005, results from the Mediterranean Intensive Oxidant Study, which examined the causes of osteoporosis in men, found that bone density and mineral content had a direct correlation to skeletal muscle mass. "The stronger and thicker your muscle tissue, the more force that tissue exerts on the bone," explains Maddalozzo. "And increased force, both during exercise and normal daily functioning, results in the bones growing stronger and denser. That significantly retards osteoporosis and, as a man ages, the rate of hip fractures." A man with a full reservoir of muscle mass enjoys dual protection: stronger bones combined with enhanced strength and agility.
Muscle mass has also proved to play a key role in more common, but no less deadly, conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. A study of scientific literature published in Circulation in 2006 cites articles showing that sarcopenia has been linked to insulin resistance (the main factor in adult-onset, or type 2, diabetes), elevated lipid levels in the blood, and increased body fat, especially "visceral adipose tissue," which gathers around the heart and other vital organs and is a primary risk factor of heart disease. In fact, researchers concluded that long-term adaptation to resistance training lowers cortical response to acute stress; increases total energy expenditure; relieves anxiety, depression, and insomnia; and demonstrates beneficial effects on bone density, arthritis, hypertension, lipid profiles, and exercise tolerance in coronary artery disease. "As the dates on these studies indicate, we are just seeing the tip of the research iceberg," says Wolfe. "In the years ahead, we are likely to see the proof of even closer relationships between muscle mass and disease states."
The case against overreliance on cardiovascular fitness — a case striking close to my heart — was made best in a study conducted at East Tennessee State University more than a decade ago. Researchers studied 43 healthy individuals who were 55 or older. Twenty-three of the subjects worked out three times a week for 30 minutes per session, confining their exercise to the treadmill, stair machine, and stationary bike. The other 20 subjects performed 15 minutes of aerobic exercise and devoted the rest of their sessions to training their major muscle groups on weight machines. After four months, bone density and lean muscle mass increased significantly in the group combining aerobic and strength training, but it did not improve for the group confined to aerobic activity.
Maddalozzo and I leave the Bone Lab and stroll across campus. He nods hello to students, whose endocrine systems sluice with testosterone and growth hormone, the juices goosing youthful muscle development. From a modest distance, Maddalozzo, at age 52, might pass as one of them. He carries a well-toned 150 pounds on a 5-foot-9-inch frame, with just 10 percent body fat.
Despite the sunshine, the professor's hospitality, and the presence of so many attractive young people, my mood continues to darken. I experience a moment of classic middle-aged angst, as if I were approaching a sigmoidoscopy or a periodontal exam. I worry, in short, that I've seen the light too late. My "muscle intervention" threatens to be as penitential as it sounds. According to Wolfe, Kraemer, Chodzko-Zajko, and other experts, resistance training must be conducted at a high intensity, at 70 percent or more of the maximum perceived effort, in order to produce the cellular and metabolic changes that yield stronger, thicker muscles and the resultant health benefits. "A little bit of training — swinging a five-pound dumbbell around — just won't cut it," says Kraemer. "That's not enough to catalyze growth and engage the systems."
The premise of all strength training is the concept of overload and recovery. Muscle fibers are made up of long strands of protein, and overloading the muscles to the point of failure during weight training causes microtears in myofibrils, the tiny proteins that force the muscle cells to contract. This activates satellite cells located on the outside of the muscle fibers to accumulate at the point where the damage occurs (much in the way that white blood cells gather at the site of skin lacerations). In effect, resistance training triggers an alarm that the muscle is falling apart, and the substance the body uses to fix it — the glue, as it were — is protein.
That's why scientists such as Maddalozzo also emphasize a muscle-friendly diet that will complement — and, to a certain degree, compensate for — the bare-bones, let's-get-through-this strength-training programs that most people are likely to follow. "Unless you eat the right diet, you won't get the best benefit from strength training," says Fred Hahn, a trainer in New York City. "You absolutely must have an adequate intake of protein for your body to adapt to the stress." In Wolfe's 2006 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, "The Underappreciated Role of Muscle in Health and Disease," he argues that the present recommended daily allowance of protein, 0.36 grams per pound of body weight, was established using obsolete data and is woefully inadequate for an individual doing resistance training. He, along with many others, recommends an amount between 0.8 and 1 gram per pound of body weight.
Strength training conforms to all the puritanical dictates that I, along with countless other men my age, spent our youths repudiating: You have to keep track, you have to keep improving, and it hurts. The weight room occupies the basement of a nearby classroom building. The room is clean and airy, with neat rows of machines and free weights, just a few small mirrors, and at this hour, to my relief, no students. Still, my heart sinks. I have never liked gyms of any description. They all seem like places of confinement, regimentation, and pain. Despite the dawning of a new age of muscle awareness, this still seems true.
To steel myself, I recall some of strength training's well-documented, no-nonsense health benefits: bone density... resting energy expenditure... protein metabolism... blood lipids. The promises we heard about running in the 1970s and '80s we now hear about weight training. In fact, some experts, such as Greg Anderson, an elite trainer in Seattle, maintain that weights and diet are all you need; you don't have to do traditional cardio at all.
Of course, I'm not the only former countercultural desperado who has to be dragged off the running trail and into the weight room. Recognizing that resistance training is less convenient and, by and large, requires more concentration than aerobic training (you can't linger over erotic fantasies as you do while laying down the miles at lunchtime under a canopy of Douglas fir), various researchers are trying to determine rock-bottom minimum workouts for muscle-mass maintenance.
Maddalozzo's strength-training program, which he teaches others and practices himself, is one of these new programs: It is two 30-minute sessions a week, comprising one set of eight full-body, multijoint exercises. Each exercise consists of eight to 15 reps, at 60 to 80 percent of "maximum perceived effort," with the final rep performed to the point of voluntary failure. "I work 60 hours a week, and I have two kids at home," says Maddalozzo. "I don't have the time or interest to spend hours in a gym."
"We'll start with the squat," he says, leading me across the floor to a bare barbell. "That's the fundamental lower-body exercise. You need basic leg strength for your running and also for general functioning, for movements such as getting in and out of a chair."
Getting in and out of a chair? "How much weight?" I ask coolly.
Maddalozzo hesitates. "Before we talk about weight," he says, "let's see a squat with no resistance." I reach for the barbell, but he stops me. "We don't even need that for now. Let's just see you do a squat."
I squat, or at least I give my version of a squat. I begin by pushing out my knees, and then I bend from the waist with my shoulders curled forward. "Not like that," says Maddalozzo. "You need to keep your back flat and your shoulders square, and drop your buttocks." He demonstrates the proper form with striking ease and fluidity.
I try to copy the motion, but I am dealing with decades of scar tissue from a torn ACL, compensating behavior, avoidance, and, I admit, increasingly active sarcopenia. My shanks have undeniably shrunk.
I try a third time, imagining myself as a baseball catcher crouching behind a batter.
Maddalozzo brightens. "Good," he says. "That's perfect."
It hardly feels perfect. Bands of pain shoot through the decimated muscle fibers of my tight, weak hamstrings. I force myself to squat lower, and in so doing, I briefly lose my balance. I touch the mat to right myself. My quads begin to tremble. A cool breeze combs the room, but I start to sweat. With some gruesome noises from my knee joint, and another bolt of pain, I stand, a lean and sneakered pantaloon, summoning as much dignity as possible.
"I guess I should begin with a pretty modest weight."
Maddalozzo gives an encouraging smile. "Just by repeating the proper motion a couple of times, you're starting to redirect your neural pathways," he says. "You're on your way. Let's go try some lunges."
DO NOT TRASH DOCUMENTS 9-28-07
With some important documents, there's nothing like the original. Life will be easier if you keep these safe in your files.
Few documents are truly irreplaceable.
As I wrote in "Purge your financial paperwork," you can get new copies of birth, death and marriage certificates. Your insurers have copies of your policies. Banks, brokerages and credit card companies can send you reprints of your statements for at least the past six years, which is as long as you're likely to need them.
But sometimes there's nothing like the real thing, baby.
While most other documents can be scanned and discarded, you should hang on to the originals of the following:
The new-car sticker
Also known as the "Monroney label," after the U.S. senator who advocated its creation in 1958, the window sticker on a new car is full of valuable data that can help you with:
- Insurance claims
- Recalls and
- Enhancing the vehicle's future sale or trade-in value
With a Monroney label, there's no question about the car's features -- they're all listed. You can show a potential buyer or your insurer exactly what came with the car, according to veteran auto writer Jim Mateja, from the type of engine to whether it has side-impact airbags.
The Monroney label also includes the car's serial number and where it was manufactured, which can help you track down whether any factory recalls affect your car, said Mateja, a Chicago Tribune auto reporter who writes for Cars.com's Kicking Tires blog. The sticker also can help establish the vehicle's value for insurance purposes, since all of its original features are listed.
Original documentation (along with repair receipts) helps establish you as a meticulous owner, one whose used car will fetch a higher price in a private sale. And if you were to hold onto the car long enough for it to become a collectible, the original Monroney in the glove box could help establish the vehicle's authenticity and add thousands to its value.
If you can show all the upgrades a car has, Mateja said, "you're justified in asking a higher price than someone who can't."
Your tax returns -- all of them
You can ditch all the supporting documentation after seven years, but the tax returns themselves should stay with you for life.The IRS and state income tax agencies typically are limited in how long they can audit your returns -- unless they decide you didn't file for a certain year.
IRS failure-to-file audits aren't that common, but tax expert Eva Rosenberg has had several clients scrutinized by state tax agencies insisting that returns from previous decades were missing.
"Some idiot state will come up and say you never filed for (a certain) year," said Rosenberg, an enrolled agent who runs TaxMama.com." At least keep the tax return and anything that proves you paid a tax bill or got a return for that year."
As with all other important documents, you'd be smart to scan copies of your tax return into your computer and make back-ups that are kept in a safe place.
"Scan them in PDF form but keep the originals," Rosenberg said. "You never know when the media will change." (Remember floppy disks?)
Another reason to hang onto tax returns: Social Security screw-ups.
Five years ago, Christina Miller of Seal Beach, Calif., noticed that her annual earnings from Social Security contained a mistake.
"For the year 1978, Social Security has incorrectly stated my income as $1,299," Miller wrote, "instead of $12,299."
Trying to get the record fixed, though, has become "a five-year nightmare." Social Security told her to write to the IRS, which told her it's up to Social Security to fix the error, adding that the IRS doesn't provide copies of tax returns that old. Miller, 56, even contacted her former employer, who "also does not keep records going back this far."
Social Security bases a worker's benefit on her 35 highest-earning years. Fortunately for Miller, 1978 wasn't one of those years. But she wonders how others fix serious errors that are more than a few years old without documents.
"What do (people) do who have had a house fire or other disaster and have lost their records?" Miller asked." I am surprised that there is no recourse."
Home-improvement receipts
If your home has gained more than $250,000 in value (or $500,000 for a couple), you'll want to look for ways to reduce your taxable profit when you sell. Receipts for home improvements can help you do that.
The cost of improvements can be added to your tax basis -- essentially, the price you originally paid for your home. That, in turn, can reduce your taxable profit.
(For those who need to know all the gory details: Under current tax code, your tax basis is subtracted from the home's selling price, minus commissions and other selling costs, to determine potentially taxable profit. The first $250,000 of profit per owner is exempt from taxes, but profit beyond that is typically subject to capital gains taxes. The top federal capital gains rate is currently 15%.)
Improvements, according to IRS Publication 523, "Selling Your Home," are defined as changes that "add to the value of your home, prolong its useful life, or adapt it to new uses." Some examples:
- Additions
- Interior remodeling
- Landscaping and fences
- Upgrades to home systems such as heating and air conditioning
- New roof, windows or doors
- Insulation
Improvements do not include maintenance or repairs, such as "repainting your house inside or outside, fixing your gutters or floors, repairing leaks or plastering, and replacing broken window panes," unless those projects are part of an extensive renovation or remodeling job.
Also, you can't count any improvement you later rip out. If, for example, you install wall-to-wall carpeting and then remove it in favor of hardwood floors, you can't add the cost of the carpeting to your tax basis.
You'll want to keep receipts detailing the work that was done, or the cost of supplies if you did the work yourself. (A credit-card statement showing a Home Depot charge probably won't be sufficient proof, which is why you want to hang on to the receipts.)
And since you're likely to own your home for years, if not decades, it's smart to keep the original receipts as well as backups since storage technology can change over time (see above).
Final account statements
Collection agencies have found a new growth industry: people who have already paid their bills.
As I wrote in "Sleazy new debt-collector tactics," a host of collectors now specialize in buying up old (and often poorly documented) debts. Even when the collectors can't prove the debt is legitimate, some debtors will pay up rather than risk damage to their credit histories.
Fred was one of them. When a collector contacted him about owing $194 for a cell phone account he'd closed in 2001, he didn't recall owing the debt. But rather than risk his credit scores, he paid up.
Later he came across an old statement showing he had, indeed, paid the original bill in full. Unfortunately, paying the bogus bill didn't save his scores -- far from it. The collectors reported the account anyway, sending Fred's scores to the basement.
Any time you make a final payment on a bill or a debt, keep the paperwork showing you've paid what you owed. Some examples include when you:
- Switch cell-phone, land-line or long-distance providers
- Cancel a health-club membership
- Shut down utilities (such as when you move)
- Close a credit card account
- Pay off a loan
- Complete a debt-management or debt-settlement plan
Making sure you get that last statement showing a "zero" balance and a closed account can also help you avoid getting sent to collections for ridiculously small debts. One woman contacted me after she saw a collections account for 63 cents on her credit reports. It turns out that she'd transposed two figures in her last check to a credit card company (she paid $13.18 instead of the $13.81 she owed), and subsequent bills weren't forwarded to her new address.
Bankruptcy petition and discharge
Another lively category of collections efforts is debt that's already been erased in bankruptcy court.
The legal obligation to pay a debt ends when it's discharged in bankruptcy, and collectors are supposed to cease dunning you for the bill. But as noted above, many debts are sold and re-sold many times among collection agencies, and documentation for the bills is often lost in the process. Some of the collectors don't realize they're trying to collect on discharged debt, while others know but don't care.
The best defense against such collection efforts is often to send the collector a copy of your bankruptcy petition and discharge, showing the debt in question has been erased, said John Ventura, a collections law expert and co-author of the book "Managing Debt for Dummies." The copies should be sent certified mail, return receipt requested, to establish a paper trail.
"If they still try to collect, (you) should contact (your) bankruptcy attorney because this is a violation of the discharge order and the attorney can file an action in bankruptcy court to stop the collector," Ventura said. If you can provide proof you've notified the collector of the bankruptcy, he said, "the bankruptcy court . . . would most likely make (the collector) pay the consumer's attorney's fees and any damages."
Since collection efforts can persist for years or even decades after the debt was incurred, you'd be smart to hang on to these documents indefinitely.
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